In light of the rapid technological developments and globalization of the world economy, the role of telecommunication is becoming increasingly important. As such, there is a growing focus on using state of the art computer technology to provide new and improved telecommunication capabilities. The capability of combining voice and digital data transmission is enabled by the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) protocol.
In addition, public networks, such as the World Wide Web allow users to access information on a wide array of topics and for a variety of purposes, ranging from playing games to researching the latest medical discovery. The ever increasing amount of information available on the web, however, has made accessing desired information more difficult. Despite the availability of sophisticated search engines, searches on the web remain highly random and often require a great deal of the users"" time and effort to sift through.
As a consequence of the increasing popularity and high level of network traffic, users often experience unacceptably slow response times to information requests. Extended idle periods, generally during loading of a new web page, can be very distracting for users and they may quickly lose interest, sometimes aborting a particular request for a web page.
To alleviate these problems, research and development has been devoted to making the web more efficient and easier to use. For example, some web service automatically collects and delivers information from web sites to the user as screen savers. The information, however, is collected only from user-specified web sites. Thus, the breadth of information delivered to the user depends significantly on the user""s current knowledge of the available resources. As such, this service does not alleviate the problem of the users receiving only a part of the benefit that the web can provide.
Other types of xe2x80x9cpush technology,xe2x80x9d which gather information relevant to a particular user based on predefined user profile and xe2x80x9cpushxe2x80x9d the information to the user, are also available. While push technology eliminates the need for users to actively seek information, web-based services deliver a vast amount of low-value information.
Problems of information overload and irrelevant content are further exacerbated in mobile communication settings. In these settings, for example, display of much low-value information on a small display severely compounds the problem of overwhelming the user. Additionally, the user may be unwilling to spend time laboriously sifting through a large quantity of information while paying for cellular connection time.
Compounding the problems of the current push technology is the static nature of the push technology that does not adapt to the dynamic nature of mobile communications. It may be desirable, for example, for the user to obtain information on a certain geographical location based on the current location of a user""s mobile phone, which rarely remains static. Additionally, other dynamic factors may be helpful in better tailoring information targeted to a particular user.
Therefore, it is desirable to filter and deliver high-value content to the user effectively.
It is also desirable to provide content tailored to dynamic parameters of the user.
Accordingly, the present invention is directed to dynamically filtering information that substantially obviates one or more of the problems due to limitations and disadvantages of the related art.
Specifically, a method consistent with the present invention for dynamically filtering information contains several steps. Initially, the present invention stores parameters of a dynamic context filter in the server. It also receives from a communication device a request for information from the network, and determines the location of the communication device. Finally, the present invention filters the information from the network using the dynamic context filter.
A system consistent with the present invention for dynamically filtering information contains a memory, receiving means, determining means, and filtering means. The memory stores parameters of a dynamic context filter in the server, and the receiving means receives from a communication device a request for information from the network. Determining means determines the location of the communication device. Finally, filtering means filters the information from the network using the dynamic context filter.